Friday, July 31, 2015

Downbeat Magazine’s Reader’s Poll follows its usual format
of using a web-based survey, where they suggest a large number of
musicians per category and than allow for write-in votes. Results should be
published in their November issue.

Thursday, July 30, 2015

Charles Gayle, tenor saxophonist and pianist, has long been
one of the most fascinating figures on the New York City free jazz scene.
Moving from Buffalo to New York in the early 1970's, he fell on hard times, enduring
lengthy stretches of homelessness for the next twenty years. He began recording
regularly in the late 1980's playing torrid free jazz influenced by his extreme
evangelical Christianity. This album was recorded live at a Polish jazz club in
2014 and has Gayle supported by Ksawery Wojcinski on bass and Klaus
Kugel on drums. What is particularly interesting is the mix of music, with
Gayle's fire breathing, pulpit pounding, spiritual avant grade jazz on tracks
"Joy in the Lord" where his raw and stringent tone opens the record
by cutting through the air like a lance. Also, the epic "Eternal Life,"
which begins with Gayle playing tenor saxophone unaccompanied with a scouring raw
sound before the bass and drums slowly glide in to offer support. Balancing these
are a surprising selection of jazz standards; Albert Ayler's eerily beautiful
"Ghosts" is a natural, with Gayle’s quivering tone weaving in and out
of the bass and percussion and the slower, more open setting allowing for an appropriately
anguished and pleading performance. Sonny Rollins's "Oleo" has a few
raw squeaks getting started, but moves into a very immediate sounding
performance that is actually reminiscent to the Sonny Rollins at the Village
Gate boxed set released recently. Gayle’s music is full of angles and sharp
turns, so perhaps Thelonious Monk's "Well You Needn't" isn’t so
surprising after all. He plays it on piano, with some ornamentation but the
strong sound of the music is highly indebted to the composer and is very
impressive. These songs anchor the middle of the album, as well as John
Coltrane's "Giant Steps" which begins with a deft drum solo before
Gayle enters. He can’t match the speed of Coltrane (few can) but he does well
to turn the melody to a solid free improvisational section, creating a
fascinating melding of one of Coltrane’s most enduring early melodies and a
free jazz meltdown that was influenced by music from the end of his life. Overall,
the album works pretty well; Wojcinski and Kugel acquit themselves well to the
music, providing a foundation for Gayle's unique style of playing, whether it
is in a way out free setting or a recitation of a hard bop standard. Charles
Gayle is one of the few remaining descendants of the deeply spiritual free jazz
scene, carrying on the work of his contemporaries, who saw their spiritual life
as the guiding force in their music. Christ Everlasting - iTunes

Saturday, July 25, 2015

The latest in the bootleg series of (mostly) unreleased
recordings is a wonderful collection of live recordings, which provide a
thumbnail version of bands Miles Davis led during this period. Moving from
bebop/hardbop to the most cutting edge of acoustic jazz and then to
no-looking-back fusion, this set shows a thoroughly defiant Davis moving
forever forward for twenty years. Miles Davis demanded that George Wein put him
in the 1955 festival as he was trying to claw his way back from addiction and
wound up in an ad hoc band that wasn’t even on the program, with Thelonious
Monk, Gerry Mulligan and others. His beautiful playing on Monk’s “Round
Midnight” wowed the audience and led to him being signed to Columbia Records.
The music moves forward to 1958 and the band that would eventually record the
famous Kind of Blue album. They are working toward that masterpiece, playing
torrid bebop on Charlie Parker’s “Ah-Leu-Cha,” moving seamlessly back to Monk
with “Straight, No Chaser,” finishing up with “Two Bass Hit” and “Bye Bye
Blackbird.” Disc two tracks extraordinary music from the “second great quintet”
of Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on
bass and Tony Williams on drums from 1966 and 1967. The music is wide open and
fierce with Williams’ slashing drums taking even subtle themes like “Seven
Steps to Heaven” and “Stella By Starlight” and electrifying them and pushing
the music relentlessly forward. It is very interesting to hear this band a
couple of years on from the famous Plugged Nickel concerts, and if anything
they were even faster and more wide open, running theme after theme without a
break, at an extraordinary level of musicianship. Disc three moves to 1969, the
year that Wein opened the festival to rock bands and Davis responded by
bringing Shorter on tenor and soprano saxophones, Dave Holland on electric
bass, Chick Corea on electric piano, and Jack DeJohnette on drums. It’s a great
band and it is a shame that the set is only twenty five minutes long, but it’s
enough to give a preview of what was to come on “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.”
The package breaks chronology to jump to Newport in Europe for a concert from
Berlin in November 1973. Here the group is expanded to seven musicians and is
playing a deep dark jazz funk. The band plays a continuous set of music that
will occasionally touch on recognizable themes like “Ife” but was for the most
part a collective improvisation of a scalding two guitar, two percussion lineup
with heavy electric bass and Davis’s blasts of electrified trumpet and smears of
organ. It is ominous and thrilling music. Disc three ends with an exhausted
Davis playing “Mtume” in 1975 just before his six year retirement. Percussion
and bass are front and center and the music goes out on a strong note. The reason
that disc four is out of order that the 1971 Newport in Europe concert from
Switzerland is over sixty minutes long. (According to the liner notes it
is the first of two concerts Davis gave that that evening. Where the heck is
the other one? Are they holding it back for Volume Five?) It’s a killer
performance too, with Davis stalking like a panther delivering swathes of
electrified wah drenched trumpet making music that must rock guitarists could
only dream of. Keith Jarrett would never play electronic instruments again
after this but provides waves of fender rhodes and organ, while a drummer and
two percussionists ley down an ever shifting carpet of rhythm for music that is
mostly drawn from the Bitches Brew LP, but remade into a heavy funk powerhouse.
This is another excellent archival boxed set from Columbia’s seemingly
bottomless archive of Miles Davis recordings. The music is simply extraordinary
and the packaging is fine as well with solid liner notes and discography and
wonderful photographs.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Bassist Michael Bates has been a force to be reckoned with
as a leader, sideman and composer on several projects on the modern mainstream
jazz scene for many years. Drawing inspiration from soul singers and jazz
instrumentalists Bates put together a tight trio for this project, including
Michael Blake on tenor saxophone and Jeremy “Bean” Clemons on drums. They kept
the music as spontaneous as possible, with no edits and using only first or
second takes to develop a raw, live sound.After “Theme for a Blind Man” sets the pace akin to “Dark Was the Night,
Cold Was the Ground” by the spiritual bluesman Blind Willie Johnson the group
moves into “Essex House” which has a raw, nearly burlesque saxophone opening
before the playing moves from sultry to bright and then back again, as Blake’s
saxophone probes and looks for handholds. “Roxy” begins with unaccompanied
saxophone, with the remaining members of the trio filling in, allowing Bates’
dark hued bass to mesh with the drums and saxophone for a well integrated and adroit
performance. The emotional cry of the saxophone and shimmering cymbals move the
music into ballad territory on “An Otis Theme On Curtis Changes” as Blake makes
his opening statement warm yet firm. The music develops from spare patience to
a more frantic section where drums crash, bass strings are pulled deeply and
the saxophone scours and grates in a wicked collective improvisation. Clemons
gets an excellent feature on “Bean,” where his hypnotic solo percussion weaves
in and around before Blake’s saxophone barrels in leading to slashing drumming
as the two musicians duke it out. “Wingnut” finds the band up and moving
strongly with a great bass and drum foundation allowing things to move
frighteningly fast and freeing Clemons to slip the leash for a short drum solo.
There is an emotional ballad sensibility to “End of History” with Blake’s soulful
saxophone playing up against the rumbling splash of drums. The slow pulls of
Bates’ bass ignites Blake into high pitch screams of music akin to early
Pharaoh Sanders, followed by a deep down bellow. There is a dynamic version of
the standard “The Days of Wine and Roses” which starts out with a liquid
mellowish feel, before Blake unleashes strong rending cries from his
instrument, and there is a wonderful bass feature for Bates, playing slowly and
patiently. Martial drums usher in “Northern Spy” amid thick bass and developing
into collective trio improvisation that is strong and true. There is an
excellent saxophone turn that is rough and honest, and the band just plays well
as a fully integrated unit devoid of any egotistical manner. “Neptune” ends the
album in a majestic fashion with a slow and deep bass solo, before the music
begins to move faster, and like a locomotive picking up speed, the trio howls
ever onward into the night. This was a very well done album where the musicians
played in a very tight fashion, supporting one another selflessly and also counting
on that support when their own solo turns came. The trio context worked out quite
well for all concerned, allowing a wide open area for them to move with their
ideas.

Monday, July 13, 2015

The great bassist Mario Pavone combines his talents with two
of the most prominent younger member of the progressive jazz scene, pianist
Matt Mitchell and drummer Tyshawn Sorey for a truly inspired album that goes
way beyond anyone’s notion of a jazz piano trio. “Suitcase is Savana” opens the
album with the trio playing at a medium tempo. What makes this group so
exciting throughout the album is their openness to doing the unexpected, as
evidenced by the ripe piano playing against skittering drums tied together with
thick bass. Sorey takes a solo toward the end of the performance, but he is
never showy and fills this music with thoughtful rhythm. His brushes slow the
pace on “Xapo” before moving back to sticks as swollen drops of piano notes
fall from the sky. The trio plays confidently together and Pavone stakes his
own claim, bubbling up over softer drumming. “Two One” has a darker and more
urgent tone, it’s a fast and harder hitting track, giving the impression that
something bad or unpleasant is going to happen. Pavone’s bass is the muscular
glue that holds the band together. Mitchell takes a forceful and rippling solo,
before the leaders own section, which exerts great force and pressure with the
grace that he has developed through his long and successful carreer. Matt
Mitchell’s thick and strong piano notes fall like a storm and ripple through
the length of the keyboard on “Silver Print.” He is really reaching deep within
himself and within his instrument for a potent statement. The music envelops
the full trio in a whirlwind of fascinating sound. “Language” begins with
everybody playing together in a very percussive nature, hollow sounding drums; pounding
piano and thickly pulled bass. It moves into a series of solos: excellent bass,
which is true and confident, probing mysterious piano and quickly fluid
drumming. They are screaming hot on “Trio Dialect” playing as one single
organism, improvising as one, amazingly locked in at this speed, Mitchell’s
piano is fast and fleet, Sorey’s drumming is fast and nimble and Pavone’s bass
is an absolute rock. The group is a little more fractured on the concluding
track “Blue” swirling freely, and there is a great and well earned solo feature
for Tyshawn Sorey where he is really going for broke driving everything
relentlessly forward before the trio pulls back for a bass led ending. This was
a wonderful album, not so much a meeting of master and pupils, but a true
meeting of equals, all of which whom bring their extraordinary talent and play
selflessly to great success.